Americans United for Life
It’s not every day that adversaries of a culture of life profile Americans United for Life’s successes. But recently Think Progress did just that, writing a piece that commented with chagrin and surprise on pro-life gains.
AUL works quietly with an “exceptionally far reach... AUL’s role in shifting the abortion debate to a ‘death by 1000 cuts’ strategy has proven effective. AUL employs a strategic brand of messaging that differentiates it from the openly religious fire-and-brimstone anti-abortion groups of the past. The organization packages its agenda with intentionally soft language about protecting women’s health, which some say has helped the group maintain a relatively low profile in spite of the scope of its influence.
“‘The semantics display a retreat from extremism,’ says Carol Joffe, a professor at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco. ‘One could argue they won by defanging the war on women.’”
“The success of AUL’s framing can be traced back to its dynamic President and CEO, Charmaine Yoest,” Think Progress also observed, calling her a “soft-spoken mother of five with a polished brown bob, Yoest distances AUL from the anti-abortion community’s militant ideologues: She has been profiled across the media for her warm, subtle approach, dubbed ‘charismatic,’ 'especially good at sounding reasonable rather than extreme,' and the movement’s kinder, gentler face.’ But it is much more calculated than that.
“In a 2011 interview with The National Catholic Register, Yoest equated the organization’s approach to a ‘military strategy. We don’t make frontal attacks. Never attack where the enemy is strongest. We don’t want to re-create Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. We pick our battles. What we do is very much under the radar screen and not very sexy.’” Thanks Think Progress for noticing.
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